Episode 22 – Top Tools To Decrease Stress During Stressful Times

You may have noticed that your “yoga bliss” is gone during this time, and your practice isn’t producing the same results. Times of high stress (like right now) may require we adjust our practice in order for it to be more effective. In this podcast, we talk about four different practices that may help move the body out of a trauma response and restore relaxation.

We are living through stressful and extraordinary times and as a spiritual practitioner, you may have noticed that during this time it is more and more difficult to keep anxiety and stress levels down. You may have noticed that some of your usual go-to practices aren’t quite as effective as they normally are.

I’ve noticed over the last few weeks that my normal go-to practices just aren’t having the same effect. I’m guessing that the same, may be true for you or for your students? So, I wanted to pop into this podcast and just explain what’s really happening here. Why isn’t the yoga that we normally employ having its incredible effects, and giving us that yoga buzz, what is the deal? Especially when we need those effects from yoga, so badly right now, this current situation this current crisis, which seems like it will be our new normal for a decent amount of time is a highly stressful event we’ve been asked to shift into this new normal very quickly with no time to adjust, or grieve our past normal. This is a pretty big deal for us, psychologically normally we have a little bit of an adjustment period, but we also have other ways to cope when things shift or transition, when life suddenly changes we can usually depend on friends and family to help us through it, but times right now are quite different and we don’t have, what we don’t have that luxury. It’s funny that it’s a loser now, but it is, and it’s not necessarily available to us at least not in the ways that it once was.

Constantly applied high levels of stress is not something in the human body is designed to cope with

Constantly applied high levels of stress is not something in the human body is designed to cope with constantly applied high levels of stress, have incredibly detrimental effects. It raises our cortisol levels, it increases our anxiety, it affects our immune system, there are very real effects from constantly applied high levels of stress, which means that has, especially as spiritual practitioners. And leaders, we’ve got to help ourselves and our community reduce stress.

Now, of course, many of the tools of yoga helped to do that and they’ve been proven to help do that. We’ve seen a lot of studies about how yoga reduces stress. And boy, boy, is that important right now? But we may have to do it in a different way. You see, what’s occurring right now is a high level of trauma and a traumatized body reverts to old triggers or old habits and patterns.